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Thursday, January 31, 2013

“The brutal rape and murder of a 5-year old in Vashi seemed to be an open and shut case on Wednesday when APMC police arrested a man claiming they had sufficient evidence against him. However, on Friday, the Navi Mumbai Crime Branch arrested another man and said that he was the actual culprit,” reported Mumbai Mirror on Saturday.
The story is bizarre — and frightening. A 5 year old child was found raped and killed. The parents file a police complaint and the police, based on their sniffer dog leading them to the house of 37-year-old Arun Pawar. “He had taken the girl to his house, then raped and smothered her to death, APMC police had claimed,” says the Mirror. Then after “thorough investigation, they had nabbed Dattatray Rokde, 53,” for the same crime, and released Pawar.
One can only imagine what Pawar went through. To be thought of as both a rapist and a callous murderer of a 5-year old, and subsequently to be arrested, while having nothing to do with the crime in question, must have been terribly traumatic.

While quick investigation and justice is a just demand, care must be taken to ensure that those who are accused and punished are, indeed, guilty. File photo of Delhi gangrape protests. AFP

Ever since the horrific Delhi rape case, we are witnessing an increase in the media coverage of sexual assaults against women – and increase public anger against the police and other authorities. Citizens are demanding immediate justice, and the police are under pressure to deliver justice on the double.
This demand has led to the Justice Verma Committee’s report. The committee had invited suggestions from the public on what could be done to make women safe in India, many of whom had called for speedy investigation, a quick trial and firm punishment.
“I assure you that the recommendations of the Justice Verma committee will receive the highest priority of the government. The cabinet will deliberate and finalise the legal amendments that are required, which we will then introduce in the Budget session of Parliament. I see enough ground for specific changes in our penal laws that will be discussed on the floor of the house with all political parties before the law is made. The gross brutality of the Delhi incident has rightfully shocked the ethos and conscience of the country. The assertion of people’s anger is good for democracy. But republican democracy does not allow extremes, we have not given to ourselves a system (of) lamp-post justice,” Ashwani Kumar, union law minister, had told The Economic Times.
The Vashi incident seemed to deliver on the speedy investigation, but the tragedy is that the investigation was obviously shoddy and resulted in the arrest and embarrassment of an innocent man.
While quick investigation and justice is a just demand, care must be taken to ensure that those who are accused and punished are, indeed, guilty.
Or we will see more Arun Pawars languishing in jail, while the perpetrators like Dattatray Rokde will roam the streets as free men.

Colombian police working with the DEA captured a drug trafficker accused of providing cocaine to Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, the world's largest drug trafficking organization.
After three months, "Operation Buenaventura" led to the arrest in Bogota of Pedro Luis Zamora, alias "Junior," who worked as a middleman between Colombian drug trafficking organizations and the Mexican cartel. Junior allegedly sent shipments of cocaine in "go fast" motor boats.The director of Colombia’s counter narcotics police unit, General Luis Alberto Perez, claimed that Junior was “directly financed by the Sinaloa cartel headed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Junior was responsible for the acquisition in Colombia of hydrochlorate...and its subsequent shipping.”The Colombian drug trafficker is wanted by a New York court for a four ton shipment of cocaine to the United States. Interpol had placed a red notice arrest warrant on his name. He will stay in the custody of Colombian authorities while the U.S. government sends extradition papers.

Five Prisoners Were Executed In Southeastern Iran

Iran Human Rights, January 31: Five prisoners were executed in the prison of Kerman (Southeastern Iran) yesterday morning January 30., reported the state run Iranian media.
According to the Fars news agency, the five prisoners were identified as "Allahnazar Sh.", "Rahmatollah Sh.", "Abdollah Sh.", "Saleh H.", and "Nematollah Sh." convicted of participation in armed trafficking of 53 kilograms and 250 grams of opium, and sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court in Kerman.The charges have not been confirmed by independent sources.

Cocaine confiscated at JFK Airport

These travelers aren't exactly packing lightly! We've investigated the slew of weird and wacky things to pass through (or be confiscated by!) customs at the NYC-area airports and beyond -- and you won't believe what we've found ... like this passenger arriving at JFK airport in New York City! Two Bronx women flying in from the Dominican Republic were arrested after allegedly attempting to smuggle in 6.5 kilos of cocaine hidden underneath makeshift diapers. See the other bizarre stuff people try to sneak past officials ...

KCNA/Reuters

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last week declared the United States as his country's "sworn enemy," and vowed to resume nuclear and long-range missle tests.

“In a village in Chongdang county, a man who went mad with hunger boiled his own child, ate his flesh and was arrested,” the official from the Korean Worker’s Party told Asia Press. RELATED: NORTH KOREA COULD BE READY TO CONDUCT A NUCLEAR TEST
Human rights groups estimate that more than 10,000 people may have died last year due to starvation in the famine-plagued country.
Meanwhile, the latest report on cannibalism comes at a time of renewed tension between North Korea and the United States.
Last week, Jong Un lashed out at the U.S. as the “sworn enemy” of North Korea, and vowed to restart nuclear and long-range missile testing.
That posturing drew a sharp rebuke from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“With a new young leader we all expected something different,“ Clinton said Monday during a State Department broadcast. ”We expected him to focus on improving the lives of the North Korean people, not just the elite but everyone. Instead he has engaged in very provocative rhetoric and behavior.”

New reports of starving North Koreans resorting to cannibalism come amid renewed tensions between Pyongyang and Washington

A North Korean man suffering starvation was put to death after it was learned he ate two of his children, a new report claims. While the man’s wife was away, he reportedly killed his eldest daughter and then his son after he had witnessed the murder. ‘We have meat,’ he told his wife on her return.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013, 8:20 PM

Damir Sagolj/Reuters

A farmer inspects his ruined crops in famine-plagued South Hwanghae province, where a man is said to have been executed recently after being reported for eating his two children.

Life in famine-ravaged North Korea does not appear to be getting better now that Kim Jong Un has succeeded his infamous father, Kim Jong Il.
A man in South Hwanghae, North Korea was put to death by firing squad after it was learned he had eaten his two children, the Sunday Times reported, citing a story in the Asia Press.
“In my village in May, a man who killed his own two children and tried to eat them was executed by a firing squad,” an unnamed citizen journalist told Asia Press, which is based in Osaka, Japan. “While his wife was away on business he killed his eldest daughter and, because his son saw what he had done, he killed his son as well. When the wife came home, he offered her food, saying: ‘We have meat.’“

A police official told The Associated Press that police were still trying to locate a man who had exchanged online messages with Sierra in Istanbul. Turkish news reports say Sierra had made arrangements to meet the man on a bridge she planned to take photographs of, on the day she disappeared, but it was not known if the meeting had taken place.
The state-run Anadolu said 28 police officers were assigned to scan security camera images from around the Taksim neighborhood, where she stayed in a hostel and around the nearby Galata Bridge she planned to visit.RELATED: VIDEO RELEASED OF MISSING STATEN ISLAND MOM IN TURKEY

AP

Members of the Istanbul-based Association For Families With Lost Relatives hand out flyers.

uncredited/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sarai Sierra is shown in an undated family photo.

On Thursday, a Turkish missing persons association joined the search, handing out flyers with photos of Sierra and urging anyone with information to call police. The group was driving a bus covered in posters of her through areas she had gone to, including Galata Bridge, a tourist destination she last told her family she would visit.
Sierra’s husband, Steven, and brother, David Jimemez, travelled to Istanbul to help in the search. Sierra’s children are 9 and 11.

Mehr News Agency quoted Syrian
media as writing that Al Nosra Front terrorists had kidnapped tens of Syrian
citizens, shot them dead, and thrown their corpses to the sea.

According to Al Watan daily
newspaper, a high-ranking official of the city has said that their examinations
indicated that most of the corpses belonged to residents of Bustan al-Qasr
neighborhood of Aleppo, kidnapped by terrorists for their supporting of Syrian
government, and a Tunisian terrorist, Hafas Abu Islam, murdered them.

The report says that Bustan
al-Qasr residents have identified the terrorists of Al Nosra terrorists
committing crime. They stressed that their sons have been kidnapped and murdered
since they rejected to leave their homes on terrorists’ demands.

Sana News reporter pointed to
horrific crimes, and said that “terrorists, as with their other crimes, claim
that Syrian government forces have committed this crime, but due to the
witnesses, they have no way but to accept responsibility for crimes.”

The families of the victims
emphasized that corpses belonged to their families, and they had frequently
contacted terrorists to pay extortion money for their freedom.

Thane: A young doctor found guilty of raping a 30-year-old woman admitted to the ICU in a hospital at Navi Mumbai, was today sentenced to ten years imprisonment by a local court.
Thane Additional Sessions Judge R D Sawant handed out the punishment to Dr Vishal Vanne (26), who was also fined with Rs 1,000 along with another three-month imprisonment in the 2010 case.
Additional Public Prosecutor Sandhya Bacchav told the court that it was on October 16, 2010 the victim and her family including children, husband and a relative came to the Modern College grounds when she suffered uneasiness and was taken to the nearby Lotus Hospital in Vashi. That night she was admitted to the ICU as her condition worsened.

AP

According to the complaint, the accused doctor was on night duty in the ward, where she was left alone with a staff nurse after a medical examination.
As the staff nurse was suffering from asthma, the accused asked her to leave the ICU and take rest. Thereafter the doctor allegedly gave an injection to the patient, making her drowsy.
The prosecution further told the court that after about two in the morning, the accused locked the door of the ICU from inside and molested the victim and also raped her repeatedly.
The victim, in her statement to the court said as she was not well that night, she could not shout or scream for help. Next morning, when she narrated the incident to her husband, Vanne was handed over to the police.
The woman’s husband told the court that on two occasions in the night he wanted to enter the ICU to check on the condition of his wife but could not do so as the door was locked from inside and also curtains were drawn.
Also, another patient in the ICU was fast asleep in the room when the incident took place.
The staff nurse, in her deposition, said she entered the ICU next morning around 5.30 AM after she was driven out the night before.

Police: 1 dead in Ariz. shooting, suspect on loose

This image provided by the Phoenix Police Department shows an undated image of Arthur Douglas Harmon, 70 who authorities identified as the suspect, who they said opened fire at the end of a mediation session at a Phoenix office complex Wednesday Jan. 30, 2013. (AP Photo/Phoenix Police Department) Harmon then fled in a 2013 Kia Optima, Arizona license plate AVS-2052, he said. Harmon shot at a witness who was following him, Thompson said. "Anybody who contacts him needs to be aware that he is armed and dangerous," he said.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A powerful explosion on Wednesday ripped through a hotel near SeaWorld San Diego from a room where authorities say a couple was extracting hash oil, sending guests fleeing for safety.

A 22-year-old man in the room suffered life-threatening injuries. Also hurt were a woman in the room and a young man staying next door, authorities said. All three were hospitalized.Julie Jordan of San Diego was sleeping with a friend's baby in a nearby room at the three-story Heritage Inn Sea World Hotel when she felt the building shake violently, then heard a loud explosion. She ran outside and saw a shattered window and a badly injured man sitting at the bottom of some stairs moaning.

"People were screaming and running, and a man was burned from head to toe," said Jordan, 30. "His skin was falling off."
Investigators found several boxes containing canisters of butane inside the room where the blast occurred, police Lt. Joseph Ramos said.
The butane apparently was ignited by a cigarette, Fire-Rescue Department spokesman Maurice Luque said. The second-floor room looked like a "war zone," he said.
"It was a very intense and devastating explosion," Luque said.
Hash oil is made by packing finely ground stems and leaves of marijuana plants in a pipe and pouring butane through it, said Amy Roderick, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which is leading the investigation. The liquid typically is then cooked on a stove to separate the butane.
Hash oil averages about 15 percent THC, the chief intoxicant in marijuana, according to the DEA. A drop or two is about as potent as a marijuana cigarette.
The DEA did not confirm that a cigarette ignited the butane or know the size of the drug operation.
"It just looks like a bomb that blew up there," Roderick said. "It's hard for us to tell what was going on there."
The DEA will review the evidence before deciding whether to send the case to the San Diego County district attorney's office for criminal charges.
Authorities said the couple in the room where the explosion occurred suffered burns, and the man in the neighboring room had bruises, cuts and possible burns.
The badly burned man was in "very, very serious" condition, Luque said. His female companion and the man in the next room — both believed to be around 20 years old — were in moderate condition. Their names were not released.
Joseph Tydingco, 52, rushed out of his room after what felt like a major earthquake and saw black smoke billowing from rooms. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and, with another guest, removed mattresses as they heard people screaming outside.
Tydingco, a SeaWorld maintenance worker, estimated that walls collapsed in six rooms. Police said at least four rooms were destroyed or badly damaged.
The blaze was mostly under control within minutes of the blast, which happened at about 11:15 a.m.
Tydingco said the hotel largely caters to vacationing families on tight budgets and local residents who lack enough cash to sign a rental lease.

A 14-year-old Sahuarita High School wrestler who is facing kidnapping and aggravated assault charges was released from the Pima County Juvenile Detention Center to his parents Tuesday.
The boy, whom the Star is not naming because his case is being heard in juvenile court, is among seven Sahuarita High wrestlers facing charges in connection with a Jan. 15 assault on a student in the high school's gym locker room.
Before Juvenile Court Presiding Judge Karen Adam ruled on the release, Attorney Michael Vaughan, who represents the boy, told Adam that the teen is not a flight risk and does not have a prior record.
The victim's father told Adam that his son and family are undergoing a "very stressful" and difficult time since his son was attacked. He said his son has begun counseling.
The father said he has had several nightmares. He also said that evidence will show that what happened to his son is not an isolated incident, but that it has "been going on for quite some time at Sahuarita High School."
Adam told the teen that under conditions of his release, he is to stay away from the victim. He is not to possess weapons or be around people with weapons. He is to attend school but not be involved in any extracurricular activities.
A trial review on the case is set for Feb. 25 at 8:30 a.m.
Among those facing charges are three students who are age 18 - Andres Vasquez of Amado, and Jorge Loya-Lopez and Marcus Stitts, both of Sahuarita. Vasquez, Loya-Lopez and Stitts were booked into the Pima County jail and have been released after posting bail.
Two youths remain in custody at the juvenile detention center, another youth was released, and the Pima County Attorney's Office is reviewing the case of two other juveniles and will decide if criminal charges will be brought against them.
Authorities say the arrests stem from an incident in which a group of students was seen forcing another student to the ground and assaulting him, Sgt. Matt McGlone, a Sahuarita Police Department spokesman, has said.
The victim, who is not on the wrestling team, was surrounded by seven to 10 students, according to interim complaints filed in court.
"The victim was forced to the ground and forcibly held by four individuals. The victim's pants and underwear were forcibly removed," the documents state.
Two of three juveniles - ages 14, 16 and 17 - performed lewd acts on the restrained student while the third teen helped hold the boy down, court documents allege. One of them also threatened a witness in the locker room, telling the student, "You're next," court records say.
The assault lasted two to five minutes, and the victim was taunted by the entire group, court documents state.
Sahuarita High Principal Kent Thompson sent a letter to families Monday saying, "We are saddened by these events and are taking a comprehensive approach to address the concerns that have emerged."
He wrote that the staff is working to promote a "safe campus culture," including "the teaching of behavioral expectations and norms in regards to interscholastic athletics programs. It is anticipated that these additional elements will be presented in cooperation with our school resource officer.
"I know that there is so much good at our school. This recent incident must not define us. Rather, it must be used to inform us and help us all be just that much better in the future," Thompson says in the letter.

Tens of thousands of coffee growers will attempt to bring roads across Colombia to a standstill in February to demand the government step in to save their troubled industry, said a strike organizer Wednesday.
The coffee growers strike will block national highways across 12 departments of Colombia, in an attempt to save an industry for which Colombia is famous, Victor Correa, strike coordinator in Antioquia department, told Colombia Reports Wednesday.
"We are paid $282 for a sack of coffee but the cost of producing it is $366," he said. "We are small farmers. We are poor. The culture of coffee growing is important to Colombia but we cannot continue like this...We are facing an economic crisis, a social crisis, an institutional crisis and a crisis of production."
Marina Velez, a coffee grower from Concordia in southwest Antioquia and president of her local growers association told Colombia Reports that, "International brands and middlemen in Colombia are getting money...but we are not getting enough to live on."
The strike and blockade is planned to begin on February 25. According to Correa the department of Antioquia will see 20,000 people taking action, while the Huila department will see 80,000 coffee growers taking what they see as a last-ditch action to save their livelihoods.
"We don't know how to do anything else but grow coffee. We cannot change careers. We don't have the money," said Velez. "It's even part of our identity."
"Cocoa producers and rice producers will also join us," said Correa. "This is a crisis of all agriculture in Colombia because the government has ignored agriculture."
Instead the government has focused on mining, claims Correa. There are mining concessions and applications covering much of the land where coffee is currently grown. "The mining companies get tax relief but agriculture doesn't."
The government has given a temporary subsidy to farmers of $33 dollars per sack, but this is not enough to turn coffee-growing into a money-making enterprise and is set to end on January 31

Police in the northwest of Colombia on Wednesday arrested a woman accused of killing three husbands in order to collect their life insurance payout.
The 45-year-old Dabeiba, Antioquia native was arrested in the municipality of Ebejico to stand trial for the stabbing of her partners in 2001, 2006 and 2010.
The husbands were killed in the city of Medellin and the nearby town of Rionegro. Following her husband's homicide, the alleged killer went to collect their life insurance, said local police.
A judge had ordered the woman's arrest on Tuesday after ruling there was enough evidence of the homicides and her threat to society to merit her incarceration.
The alleged killer would not be the first "black widow" in the Antioquia department; as recent as in 2011, a criminal group dubbed "the Black Widow Gang" was dismantled for the alleged killing of men who married into the group

A special report by intelligence reports accessed by CNN-IBN says that the ISI had taken the assistance of the two terror groups to infiltrate the border and kill Indian soldiers.
According to the report, the ISI plotted the killings of the Indian soldiers in the Mendhar district and the operation was led by a serving ISI subedar, Jabbar Khan, from a unit based in Tattapani in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir along with 15 others, consisting of LeT and JeM militants.

Pakistan’s ISI an terror groups could be involved in the recent beheading of the Indian soldiers. IBNLive.

The ambush party was stationed at Barmoch border outpost in PoK, which is directly across the Atma Post which is held by the Rajputana Rifles. The Pakistan squad reportedly monitored the movement and deployment of the Indian Army personnel before carrying out the attack and a day after the ambush party was spotted at Tattapani in PoK.
Locals living along the Line of Control may have acted as guides, the report said.
One of the LeT operatives, Anwar Khan, involved in the beheading was allegedly rewarded with Rs 5 lakh by his handlers, the intelligence report said.
Incidentally, Khan was also reportedly involved in the beheading of an Indian Army captain in 1996 in the Krishna Ghati area.
“There cannot be any doubt about it (that the jehadi groups are capable of carrying out this brutalisation). We have given proof to the world that there are about 40-50 such camps strung along the LoC. They act with the help of ISI and the regular Pak army,” Lt General M K Sawhney, ex-Military Intelligence Chief, said.

TEHRAN, Jan.
30 (MNA) – Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali
Khamenei issued a decree on Monday granting amnesty to some prisoners and
reducing the sentences of a number of others.

Earlier, Judiciary Chief
Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani had written a letter to the Supreme Leader in
which he made a proposal to grant clemency to 1298 convicts on the occasion of
the birthday anniversary of Prophet Muhammad (S), which was celebrated on
Tuesday.

An alleged Colombian priest on Wednesday was apprehended in a Russian airport after police discover he is concealing 13 cocaine-stuffed condoms in his stomach, reported Russian authorities.According to a statement by Russia's Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN), the priest was in the Sheremetievo airport in Russia's capital city of Moscow when he came under the suspicion of authorities due to his "sickly appearance and nervous behavior."
After being detained and taken to a nearby hospital, doctors discovered in the course of an inspection that he was concealing 13 cocaine-stuffed condoms in his gastrointestinal tract. Another five containers full of cocaine were discovered in his luggage.
The 18 containers supposedly yielded 780 grams of cocaine.
According to his documents, the priest -- Fabio Ricardo Rodriguez -- is a resident of Bogota, where he purportedly practiced as a parish priest.